Just Jump
by infinityphoenix
Summary: Chell finally snaps when she hears Wheatley promise not to kill her if she came back. And it was so nice of him to tell her all about those nice things at the bottom of the deadly pit... Based off of the "Pit Boss" trophy. One-shot.


**Author's Note:** This is based on the part of Portal where you escape "the Part Where He Kills You". Wheatley will ask you to come back and jump down a pit, and if you do, you get a trophy for it. I just added what I thought would happen after the jump. Enjoy.

PS: One of the people I showed this to ahead of time said that the line breaks were a bit confusing. The first is to show a point of view change, and the second is just what happens after Chell jumps and it's not really canon anymore.

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><p>"Where'd you go? Come back! Come back!"<p>

As soon as Chell reached the catwalk, she rushed towards the next room, focused, as always, on escape.

"No, seriously. Do come back. Come back, please," Wheatley asked. He was starting to panic; after all, this was supposed to be "the part where he killed her."

That's when another brainwave hit him: Chell was running away because she didn't want to die! Therefore, if he could trick her into thinking that he wasn't going to kill her, she would come back! Brilliant!

"Okay, I've decided not to kill you, okay? _If_ you come back."

Ah, who was he fooling, Chell was smarter than that. If she were that idiotic, she would have walked straight into GLaDOS' "final test." Seriously, he didn't even have the time to put a heart next to his deathtrap; there was no way—

Wait, was she coming back?

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><p>Chell had been through a lot. Every human mind had its breaking point, and Chell had endured what would have caused lesser minds to snap many times over.<p>

However, Chell was still human, and still had that breaking point. And when she heard her old friend offer her a "get out alive" guarantee, she reached that point. Her mind, which had stared death in the face countless times in the last few hours, clung to that far-fetched promise.

Chell should have known better. Unfortunately, her poor brain had been hammered with so much improbable information that her reality filter had simply broken down. After her only friend in a long time had betrayed her, GLaDOS had been stuffed into a potato, and Chell had teamed up with her nemesis to prevent the annihilation of Aperture Science, Chell heard Wheatley say "I've decided not to kill you" and thought, "oh, good."

So, Chell stopped in her tracks and walked back towards the deathtrap.

"Oh! You came back!" Wheatley exclaimed. "I … didn't actually plan for this. Um, … I can't reset the death trap … Um … oh! Could you just jump into that pit? Could you just jump into that pit, there? Could you just jump into that pit?" Wheatley asked, referring to the long fall at the end of the broken walkway. "Could you just jump into that pit for me? There. That deadly pit?"

Chell walked to the end of the catwalk and looked down. She couldn't see the bottom, partially because of the fog and partially because the bottom was too far down for the light in the room to reach it properly.

It was here that Wheatley decided to take advantage of Chell's clearly broken reality filter and start lying again. "You're saying to yourself 'why should I jump into the pit?' I'll tell you why. Guess who's down there? Your parents! You're not adopted after all! It's your natural parents down there in the pit. Should've mentioned it before, but I didn't. So jump on down, and reunite with mommy and daddy."

Chell continued to look down into the apparently bottomless pit. Before she could decide to jump, Wheatley decided to sweeten the lie.

"Oh, I'll tell you what's also down there. Your parents and … there's also there's also an escape elevator! Down there. Funny, I should have mentioned it before. So pop down, jump down. You've got your folks down there and an escape elevator."

Before Chell could take a step back to prepare to jump, Wheatley continued to add things to the list of incredible discovery waiting for Chell at the bottom of the deadly pit.

"And what else is down there … tell you what, it's only a new jumpsuit. A very trendy new designer jumpsuit from France, down there. Which is exactly your size. And if it's a bit baggy, we've got a tailor down there as well to take care of that for you. And what's _this_, a lovely handbag? And the three-portal device! It's all down there!"

Chell squinted to try and see some of those wonderful things through the mist.

"Um … you've got a yacht. And … boys! Loads of boys, fellas, hunky guys down there, and possibly even a boyfriend! Who's to say at this stage?" Wheatley asked rhetorically, not even completely sure himself what was at the bottom of the pit. "But, ah, a lot of good looking fellas down there. And, ah, a boy band as well! Um, that haven't seen a woman in _years_. And they're not picky at all; they don't care if you've got a bit of brain damage, if you've been running around, if you've been sweating… And … a farm … a pony farm! And, um, … awww. Just jump down, would ya?"

Wheatley had said more than enough to convince Chell at this point. She took a few steps back and prepared to jump.

GLaDOS, who had assumed up until this point that Chell had been wasting their precious time listening to Wheatley make a fool of himself, spoke up in alarm. "You really do have brain damage, don't you? I can't believe you came back."

Chell ignored the remark of her old enemy and jumped down the pit.

"Oh! Wow! Good!" Wheatley exclaimed ecstatically, "I did _not_ think that was going to work."

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><p>"You <em>idiot!<em> I cannot _believe_ that you actually jumped! You've doomed us both! Why couldn't you have been this idiotic while _I_ was still in charge?" GLaDOS lamented.

Chell continued to ignore the supercomputer-turned-potato-battery and thought of what she would do first when she reached the bottom of the pit.

After a few minutes of falling, Chell landed on another walkway. The walkway swayed violently from the force of the impact, but Chell was unharmed thanks to the long-fall boots.

"Oh, thank Science that this walkway was here," GLaDOS said with a computerized sigh of relief. "And there's a surface that you can place a portal on! Just make sure—wait, what are you doing?"

Chell, having determined that none of the things that Wheatley had promised her were here, was currently climbing over the side of the catwalk and was preparing to jump again.

"No!" GLaDOS yelled, "No, no, no, you moron! Don't jump!"

Chell jumped anyway.

About five minutes after reaching terminal velocity, Chell and GLaDOS reached the bottom of the pit, where the long-fall boats once again saved them both. Chell blinked a few times and looked down. That was strange. She couldn't fall anymore and yet none of the wonderful things that Wheatley had described were within sight.

"Okay, listen up, you mute lunatic, because I'm only going to explain this once. The lovely long list of promises that idiot up there fed you? They were all _lies_. None of them exist! You _are_ adopted, the only way for you to get out is through the control room, and if there were a three-portal device, I would have had you test it by now! I could explain the rest to you, but the thing is: _this entire facility is going to explode unless you plug me back into my body!_ And it's going to happen very soon. And you just wasted ten precious minutes falling down a pit."

GLaDOS activated her slow-clap processor. "Now, use your brain for this, Chell. Do you remember the grief consoling? Do you remember the party? Do you remember the _cake_? They were all lies I used to try to kill you, and they didn't slow you down for a second. So, I'm going to have to ask you to reclaim your sanity and shoot an orange portal on the conveniently placed Aperture Science Portal Surface forty degrees to your right. I need you to murder that idiot for me. You're good at murder, right?"

It was then that Chell remembered that the cake was a lie, and the world was a cruel and unfair place. It was a shame the grief consoling was a lie. So she shot the orange portal and walked through, ignoring Wheatley's shock.

As the Intelligence Dampening Sphere stuttered that all those wonderful things weren't down there because they thought Chell's long-fall boots were ugly, Chell promised herself that after this was all over, she would bake a cake and see a therapist.

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I never understood why you could die falling down those pits when you had the long-fall boots… Don't forget to leave a review. If you leave a review, there will be cake.


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